


Together, We Will Live Forever

by endversecas



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Drug Abuse, Drug Use, M/M, Mild Gore, Overdosing, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-07
Updated: 2014-07-07
Packaged: 2018-02-07 21:16:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1914120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/endversecas/pseuds/endversecas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cas and Dean become strangers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Together, We Will Live Forever

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this a couple of months ago at 4 a.m. because I was feeling sad. This is the result. Sorry. 
> 
> Also: the bits of text that are separated with backward slashes are supposed to be in italics and denote that it is a memory. I can't fix it at this time because my computer is out of order. Sorry for any confusion.

Castiel can sense Dean's presence in his doorway, a thunderhead rolling darkly on the horizon, yearning to tear open the sky, to bleed it empty.

He is angry. His anger lies in him like a stone, making him heavy - a weight Castiel can feel even from where he lays on his bed. 

“Do you think you could get up off your worthless ass for once?”

The words are harsh. If he were sober, they might have hurt, like running into the sharp corner of a dresser – sudden and encompassing. He is not sober. He is dancing with a needle in his arm.

“I find being worthless more profound than any other state of being, Dean.”

He speaks languidly, as if time doesn't exist – which, it doesn't – and smiles at Dean, a fissure in fine porcelain. 

Dean does not even spit a reply. He leaves, taking his heavy anger with him, and Castiel is both relieved and disappointed. 

\--

Castiel remembers the first time he got high: he ended up pissing himself and crying ugly tears into Dean’s jacket. It was terrifying and exhilarating, but it scared him. He felt, for the first time, just how fragile being human made him. A minuscule dosage of chemicals broke him into a million fragmented pieces.

He clung to Dean’s neck and broad shoulders, sobbing sloppily and muttering about time and space and how utterly useless he and everything was. Except Dean. Castiel would never sink low enough to believe Dean useless.

/Dean, look at me. I am nothing. I hate myself./

/Cas, come on, man. You’re beating yourself up for no reason./

Castiel kissed him. Dean had kissed back.

/Being intoxicated is reminiscent of having grace./

/How do you mean?/

/I can feel the threads of the universe again, only now, they are secrets that I have no hope of ever unraveling. But it’s worth it just to feel them again./

/You should sleep, Cas./

He did, in Dean’s arms. The next day, neither one spoke of it. Castiel got high again.

\--

At night, after the orgies and the binge-drinking and drugging, Castiel considers taking the polished pistol in his night table drawer and placing it delicately in his mouth. He imagines the sharp, cool metal laying on his tongue.

He salivates and swallows thickly.

He pictures the back of his head exploding, brain matter and blood spattering the wooden wall; he sees his eyes roll back in his head as he slumps down onto the bed, his hollow skull dripping red onto his worn blanket. 

It’s a pretty picture. 

When that doesn't satisfy, he pictures a contorted spoon over the flame of his lighter, bubbling with some sweet, deadly poison. He drops the wad of cotton ball into it, filtering it, then sticks the needle through the soaked ball, drawing up every last drop. 

He wraps the tourniquet tight around his bicep; it bites into his flesh like a warning.

The needle resists his skin, the scar tissue too thick, but he forces it through – his thumb slams the plunger. He can almost feel the electricity moving up his arm and inside his vessels and finally easing around his heart. In minutes, he is unconscious. 

Dean would find him.

Each night, after an evening of pure hedonism, he plans. And he puts it away for day when Dean isn't around.

Then he sleeps, hoping that maybe he won’t wake. It’s not his fault if he dies in his sleep.

\--

“You need to stop.” It’s a command, but Dean is begging. Castiel can hear it in the rough edges of his voice and he wears it like soggy clothing. 

“I’m not doing anything.” 

“You know what I mean, Cas.” His lips protrude, a discontented pout. Castiel wants to kiss him. 

Castiel finishes packing the bowl of marijuana, laying it gently on his thigh. “Why?” Silence.

Dean is staring at his forehead, hard enough to crack through and see all the muck and pain and weariness – maybe he can already see it. 

“Marijuana is not directly harmful-“

“I don’t mean the weed!” Dean shouts, suddenly, his face turning red. The vein in his neck is bulging. He composes himself, clenching his chiseled jaw. “I mean everything else. You’re killing yourself.”

“So?” He stares at Dean, willing the man to meet his eyes. 

Dean tenses and finally drops his gaze, looking into Castiel’s blue eyes. There are lines around them. The moment hangs between them, some sort of sick déjà vu of a moment that never came to be, that grinds itself against Dean’s heart. He nearly breaks. 

“You’re right.” The green in his eyes is not so vibrant; Castiel thinks he might have cried it all away once.

Castiel waits a beat to see if Dean will speak further, then returns to his bowl, lighting it and taking a long hit. Dean is heavy again, that stone settling further in his middle, pulling him down to the ground - into his grave. He hesitates, perhaps is on the cusp of saying something else and Castiel thinks /please say something/, but Dean turns on his heel and leaves. A little boy wearing soggy clothes, caught in a thunderstorm. 

He is gone for one week.

Castiel thinks he might hate him. 

\--

The day is cold. The sky is bleak and unimpressive. 

Castiel can feel the coming winter in the sinew between his bones, a leftover knowledge of the world and its workings, stuck in him like a splinter beneath a nail. 

He lies in his cold bed, staring at the empty ceiling, wishing he could at least go back to sleep. His arm lays over the antique, wooden headboard, and he absently moves it back and forth.

Dean has not spoken to him in two weeks. Castiel doesn't leave his cabin much anymore. He eats when he remembers to, showers when he must. He has even locked the door to those he opened his bed to. They hold no interest for him. They are only wilting bodies that will be pressed into the ground, ashes. 

Dean has not come to see if Castiel is alive. 

He doesn't blame him. Castiel wouldn't check on himself, either. In fact, he would not feel sorry if he dropped dead at this very moment.

Castiel laughs into the silence, his breath steaming in the cold air – it is a broken sound. Smashed piano keys; porcelain shattering as it hits the ground. He laughs and laughs and laughs, the sound distorting and warping into something different, something more animal – a harsh keening that dissolves into great racking sobs. Castiel cries. He cries for Sam, he cries for Dean, he cries for the whole world, and then he cries for himself. 

The self that died and left him to rot in a shithole. His tears dry up. 

He only then notices the pain in his arm, and pulls it forward to peer at it. 

There is a large rut in the delicate skin, bloody and raw. Castiel likes it. 

\--

He is alive. Miraculously, violently alive. The gun in his hands is warm with use and he can hear the screeching and gunfire from the rest of the building. He stands, brushing his palms against his filthy jeans, and steps over the broken bodies of the Croats that had tried to box him in. He is on autopilot, his brain full of static and letting his body lead him around, a forgotten wind-up toy. His tired legs bring him to a grubby window and he raises his hand to wipe it clean, so that he can peer down through it.

It’s a garden. 

There are red roses, bleeding on the bushes. There are statues, weeping silently.

There’s a figure in white, its heel pressed tight to Dean’s throat. 

With a jerk, Dean’s neck is snapped so loudly Castiel can hear it, and it brings him out of his stupor, rousing him from his bodily grave. He jerks violently forward, gasping like a drowning man. His ribcage is going to bust apart. He is aching, trembling like a leaf in a mighty gale that clings desperately to its anchor. He slams his palms against his forehead, grating out a despondent “No.” 

No.  
No.  
No.  
No no no no no no no no no no

 

He doesn't remember finding his way back to the camp. He also doesn't remember locking himself in his cabin, nor does he recall sitting on his bed, Dean’s shirt in his hands. 

He had left it there once, back when they shared each other's company in the form of a naked embrace. 

Castiel, with a muted sense of duty, reaches for the small leather bag on his end table. He unzips it slowly, savoring the moment. How often did one get to live out their most desired fantasy? 

He loads the large spoon with the golden-brown substance and holds his lighter beneath it, his hands shaking slightly. It bubbles and pops, excited, like it’s ready to flood him. He drops the cotton wad in, then inserts the new needle, drawing the plunger back. The liquid is sucked up into the syringe. 

He vomits before he can even get the tourniquet tied. He feels so close to shattering, breaking into a hundred thousand pieces, unfix-able. He wonders briefly where he will go.

He doesn't care. 

He ties the tourniquet around his bicep and pulls it tighter and tighter; it bites his skin. 

His hands tremble so hard he can barely line the needle up to his skin, but he takes a breath and remembers-

Dean. Oh, Dean. Dean, whose blood is spilling into the soil of that ill-fated garden. Roses shall bloom where he lies, taking his place in the world. That is eternity, though. Isn’t it? Cells organizing and disorganizing. 

Castiel thinks he’d like to be the soil Dean’s roses sprout from, or maybe the rain that will fall and kiss him sweetly upon velvet petals.

 

The needle stings when it enters the tender bend of his elbow. He pushes down the plunger, watching the liquid disappear into his body, and seconds later it hits him like a truck, knocking him backward against the bed. He can’t even pull out the needle. 

He wants to drag Dean’s shirt over his face so he can smell him while he goes, memorizing the spice and sweet pull of his scent, but he can’t. He is barely inside himself.

He closes his eyes, but a shock of fear makes him open them again, and when he does, Dean is lying face-to-face with him. His tan skin is smattered with light freckles. Castiel wants to count them, but his vision is beginning to blur. /I’m tired, Dean./

/I know, Cas. I know./

Castiel exhales, his lungs rattling. He can’t keep his leaden eyes open anymore, but he knows if he closes them, Dean will be gone again. 

/Promise me that you’ll look up at the sky when it rains, so that I can kiss you./

/You should sleep, Cas./

He does.

**Author's Note:**

> If you like this work, please leave a comment.


End file.
